To get back to why this thread was started in the first place. If Warren is really a champion for the little guy, as she clearly wants her image to reflect, she should call for reforms...
Originally Posted by WombRaider
Fully agree, and not only with respect to this issue, but regarding a whole host of others.
But first, just a bit about my take on the Ex-Im debate:
From the outset, please note that I'm biased (as is the case with virtually everyone else, of course).
As a long-time early stage VC and private equity partner involved in smallish and mid-sized companies, I have a bit of a problem with politically-directed policy agendas that favor the biggest and best-connected players over their smaller competitors. Unfortunately, I believe that's increasingly become the case with Ex-Im, and that anyone purporting to be serious about a "reform" agenda, not just standard issue "business-as-usual" and demagoguery, should boldly promote something that actually amounts to ... well, a
reform program! Everything that I've seen so far about Warren is that she's long on convenient, politically appealing rhetoric, and short on practicable and realistic reform ideas.
A good place for her (or any other serious individual, for that matter) to start would be our very bad and non-territorial corporate tax code. This is an issue on which many people on both sides of the ideological divide actually agree.
For instance:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...102601860.html
That was written way back in 2007. The amazing thing is that even after the author became Obama's CEA Chair, nothing happened in the way of a seriously robust push toward reform.
Why? I think it's because representatives of the biggest U.S. multinational corporations are not as unhappy with the existing code as one may assume, because they can finesse and game the system to a far greater extent than their smaller competitors can hope to do. Although the top statutory rate is 35% (closer to 40% if you add in average state corporate income taxes), few pay an
effective rate anywhere near that level. Yet smaller firms have a more difficult time maneuvering to lower their effective rates, and therefore are placed at a competitive disadvantage. So the whole mess is essentially just another in a long list of crony capitalist shuffles.
Still, I believe the code -- especially the non-territoriality aspect of it -- does some damage to U.S. competitiveness and should be junked or fundamentally reformed.
Then when Ms. Warren gets finished dealing with that, I think she should move on to Dodd-Frank, and I don't mean just with respect to continuing her current noisy denunciations of anyone wanting to move to more appropriate and less damaging reform measures, or to roll back it's most damaging effects. Although it surely contains some beneficial elements, it's mind-numbingly complex and does little about TBTF. In fact, the biggest banks are now vastly bigger than they were in the pre-crisis days, and the largest traders and speculators are still able to play the same risky games. Although Warren opines that behemoths like Citi should be broken up, she offers little else in the way of practicable policy measures.
But instead of anything like the above, she seems to spend most of her rhetoric on tired bromides such as pushing the capital gains tax rate to what she and other progressives consider "fair" -- even though that would do little or nothing to raise additional revenue, let alone anything remotely like the resources needed to advance a progressive agenda, and if carried too far would likely backfire.
